Saturday, August 21, 2010

Bomber's Blog - The War on News - ONLINE NOW!

The War on News: I'd rather defecate in a bucket and stare at it than read the Herald on Sunday Micheal Laws sex text scandal! How come 'South Aucklanders are too stupid to vote' goes unchallenged? Why is Tony Ryall spying on hospitals? The ACT implosion is a gift that just keeps giving!

4 Comments:

The chaotic and almost anarchic current crime ridden and murderous breakdown within N.Z represents a clear and a shining example of the neo-liberal paradigm or shift in political philosophy over the so-called entrenched inter-generational welfare debate.

From what was once the social welfare laboratory in terms of universal provision of benefits and student allowances and compulsory super to targetted means testing of student loans and time limits on sickness and invalids benefits and stricter rules for solo mums all of which make it harder and contribute to the all encompassing and the fall in terms of social cohesion which is now in a rapid freefall.

This almost historical/hysterical reversal of social-welfare-policy provision means that we must now face up to and contest the basics of rogernomics and ruthanasia the skeletons of which remains the bones we are all chewing currently.

The World BANK and the IMF and the OECD all point to the radical experiment failing international tests of legitimacy.Here we have a notoriously thin democracy with an executive boss over-riding cabinet and caucus decisions and legislation for off the cuff decisions of a CEO type nature rolling over commitments overseas for one example.With our small population trapped by isolation geographically we make a good test tube breeding ground for dysfunction.Neoliberalism is still the dominant paradigm of social provisions.

CITIZENS HAVE BEEN RE-DEFINED AS USER PAYS CONSUMERS ONLY OF PRIMARILY EDUCATION AND VOLUNTARY DONATIONS OR OUT OF ZONE FEES AT STATE SCHOOLS.

THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING SIGNIFICANT DOWNSIZING ESPECIALLY IN THE SUPERCITY WITH A REDUCED RATES BASE TO SUBSIDISE PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN TIME FOR THE RUGBY WORLD CUP NEXT YEAR.

In N.Z a distinctive strand of neo-liberalism has now been entrenched since they first cut the benefit's by up to a quarter for solo mum's in the 1991 never to be reversed ever since decline in child poverty rates and substance abuse and addictions.Nowhere is the sharp decline more evident than in education and social welfare rights to a free education for beneficiaries and their kids.Targetting more social assistance at these groups is just the beginning of a revolutionary change in social welfare provision in the future. A modest safety net will no longer suffice. N.Zers do not want to be free to join the cues of immigrants wanting low paid jobs.We expect something better for our own.People coming here from overseas will just have to take their chances like the rest of us.

Hmm baby is going out with the bathwater a bit here. I agree that the cuts to social assistance have resulted in a halt to NZ's social evolution but I don't accept that NZ is suffering a "chaotic and almost anarchic current crime ridden and murderous breakdown".

It may seem attractive to some to use the bourgoise law and order lies back against the greedheaded neo-libs but in doing so we leave ourselves open to the neo-liberal cure. That is an increase in already too high rates of incarceration, along with the concomittant privatisation of the law and order industry creating one more powerful vested interest whose resources are devoted to ensuring any politician who 'goes soft on crime' is targetted and driven out of office.According to Dr Michael Rowe's 2009 study, NZ's murder rate has fallen from 21 murders a year per million population in the years 1985 to 1992 to 12 murders a year per million of population, in 2008.

The right plays the lawn order BS as a way of making it seem that governments still do stuff even though they have surrendered most of their controls to corporate capitalism, and it is silly to get caught up in that game because it is founded on a fiction. There hasn't been any increase in violent crime in NZ. The change has occurred within the media who used to keep the gruesome details of rapes assaults and murders to themselves. It was considered disrespectful of the victims and counter to the notion that law enforcement needs to be focussed on rehabilitation and prevention not vengeance.Some time in the mid 80's Metro discovered the obvious, that is there is a substantial chunk of voyeurism in any medium to large society where gossip vectors are obstructed by anonymity. So they began publishing the salacious details of trials. This went down so well that they began interviewing witness using the awful "how does it feel to find out yer mum's been hacked up" tabloid techniques that are kept out of a criminal trial. A cover spread of the latest media outed 'psychopath' along with some maudlin remark by an alleged victim would bail out a flagging circulation whose readers had lost interest in the difference between foi gras and terrine d'maison, every time.In no time the rest of the print media then tabloid TV followed suit.That how we got here in a land where more than 20 young men overwhelmed with feelings of powerlessness, commit suicide in Mount Eden prison every year, and nobody cares because the dead are mainly unwhite and just like the murder rate, peeps are making important decisions about lawn order with few facts but belief in rightist lies told to encourage citizens to surrender their rights.

Some time in the mid 80's Metro discovered the obvious, that is there is a substantial chunk of voyeurism in any medium to large society where gossip vectors are obstructed by anonymity.

Daily life say's otherwise as these are the young men and women or youth who had your bourgoise language used against them , to keep them in their place and to mystify and to bully and to make them feel powerless.The silent majority if released into language would no longer be content just to uphold a status quo position which betrays them fitting unexceptionally into the status quo.